Maria Qamar facts for kids

Maria Qamar (born 1991), also known as Hatecopy, is a Pakistani-Canadian artist. She is famous for her funny and colorful pop art. Her artwork often shows a mix of South Asian and Canadian cultures. She gets ideas from artists like Roy Lichtenstein and from Indian soap operas. Maria Qamar is also the author of a book called Trust No Aunty.

Early Life

Maria Qamar was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1991. Her father was from Bangladesh, and her mother was from Gujarat, India. Both of her parents were chemists. Growing up, Maria learned about both Bengali culture and Gujarati culture.

In 2000, when she was nine years old, her family moved to Ontario, Canada. They first lived in Scarborough for a short time. Then, they moved to Mississauga, where Maria spent the rest of her childhood. She has a brother who became a doctor.

Maria was interested in art from a very young age. She sometimes faced unfair treatment and bullying at school because she was South Asian. This was especially true after the September 11 attacks. Maria later said, "I started going home and drawing comics about these experiences." She added, "But I would change the outcome. In my comics I always got the last laugh." She was proud of her Desi (South Asian) identity. She also liked Western teen styles like goth, punk rock, and heavy metal.

Her Art Career

Maria moved to Toronto and started a job as a copywriter in advertising around 2011. She hoped this job would be creative, but she didn't like it. She found it frustrating to need so many people to approve her work. She lost this job around 2015.

Meanwhile, Maria had taken some art classes at George Brown College. She started sharing her art on her Instagram page, where she uses the name Hatecopy. This name shows how she felt about her old job. She quickly became very popular as an artist. She began showing her art in unusual places, like bars. By 2019, she had more than 170,000 followers on Instagram.

Exhibitions and Recognition

Maria Qamar has sold her artwork at shows in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, and London. Mindy Kaling, who created and starred in The Mindy Project, collects Maria's art. Maria's paintings were even used to decorate the set of that TV show. She has also created large wall paintings (murals), signs, and designs for menus and plates for restaurants in different cities in North America.

Her book, Trust No Aunty, won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction. In the 2020s, she also started selling her art as NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). This is another way artists can make a living from their work.

What Her Art Is About

Maria Qamar is known for using humor and satire in her art. She comments on how South Asian and Canadian cultures blend together. She uses a pop art style to create pieces that talk about her experiences. These include dealing with racism, being a first-generation immigrant, body shaming, class differences, and the patriarchy (a system where men hold most of the power).

Her art style is clearly inspired by the work of Roy Lichtenstein. She also gets ideas from everyday culture, like Indian soap operas. One of her first artworks was even titled "what if Lichtenstein parodied Indian soap operas." Maria does not change her artworks to make them easier for Western audiences to understand. Instead, she keeps South Asian words and themes as they are. This is because she mainly creates her art for a Desi (South Asian) audience.

Exhibitions

In 2019, Maria had an exhibition called "Fraaaandship!" at the Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York. This show brought her even more attention. She was the youngest artist at the gallery and the first to become famous through Instagram.

In 2022, she had her own show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada. It was called Dhamakedar, Superstar!. This exhibition was about a young woman with starry eyes who was in love with a famous person.